Title: Brain tumour diagnostic segmentation based on optimal texture features and support vector machine classifier

Authors: Ahmed Kharrat; Mohamed BenMessaoud; Mohamed Abid

Addresses: National Engineering School, Computer Embedded Systems Laboratory (CES), University of Sfax, BP 1173–3038 Sfax, Tunisia ' National Engineering School, Computer Embedded Systems Laboratory (CES), University of Sfax, BP 1173–3038 Sfax, Tunisia ' National Engineering School, Computer Embedded Systems Laboratory (CES), University of Sfax, BP 1173–3038 Sfax, Tunisia

Abstract: This paper presents a new general automatic method for segmenting brain tumours in Magnetic Resonance (MR) images. Our approach addresses all types of brain tumours. The proposed method involves, therefore, image pre-processing, feature extraction via the wavelet transform-spatial gray level dependence matrix (WT-SGLDM), dimensionality reduction using the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and classification of the reduced features using a support vector machine (SVM). These optimal features are employed for the segmentation of brain tumour. The resulting method is aimed at early tumour diagnostics support by distinguishing between brain tissue, benign tumour tissue and malignant tumour tissue. The segmentation results in different types of brain tissues that are evaluated by comparison with manual segmentation, as well as with other existing techniques. The quantitative evaluation shows that our approach outperforms manual segmentation with match percent (MP) measures equal to 97.08% and 98.89% for malignant and the benign tumours, respectively. The qualitative evaluation displays that our attitude overtakes the FCM algorithm with an accuracy rate of 99.69% for benign tumours and 99.36% for malignant tumours.

Keywords: image pre-processing; WT-SGLDM; wavelet transform; spatial gray level dependence matrix; GAs; genetic algorithms; SVM classification; support vector machines; image segmentation; brain tumours; texture features; magnetic resonance images; medical imaging; feature extraction; dimensionality reduction; tumour diagnostics; brain tissue; tumour tissue; benign tumours; malignant tumours.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSISE.2014.060057

International Journal of Signal and Imaging Systems Engineering, 2014 Vol.7 No.2, pp.65 - 74

Received: 04 Apr 2011
Accepted: 28 Feb 2012
Published online: 27 Oct 2014 *

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